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It was further increased, also, by having turned the Court of France against her, and engendered a coolness towards her on the part of Madame de Maintenon herself, who up to that juncture had always approved of her manner of acting and her system of government, but who now, seizing the occasion of Orry having established some imposts upon the Catalans, did not hesitate to say very harshly and laconically: "We do not think Orry fit for his post, for Spain is very badly governed."
Louis IX., animated by the same feeling of fear, or impelled, if we may credit Ancelot, by motives of a higher character, set out from Aigues-Mortes, in 1248, with one hundred and twenty large vessels, and fifteen hundred smaller boats, hired from the Genoese, the Venetians and the Catalans; for France was at that time without a navy, although washed by two seas.
The latter went about among the peasants with a kindly word of welcome to each, giving them the cheering news that though the great English general was occupied in Valencia, he had promised that, when the time came, he would come with all haste to the defense of Barcelona, and in the mean time he had sent an officer of his own staff to assist him to lead the noble Catalans in the defense of their country.
The solitary light burning at the Catalans; that first sight of the Chateau d'If, which told him whither they were leading him; the struggle with the gendarmes when he wished to throw himself overboard; his despair when he found himself vanquished, and the sensation when the muzzle of the carbine touched his forehead all these were brought before him in vivid and frightful reality.
At last we arrived at Perpignan upon a holy-day: a company of Catalans, who were dancing in the middle of the street, out of respect to the prince came to dance under his windows: Monsieur Poussatin, in a little black jacket, danced in the middle of this company, as if he was really mad.
In the riparian Navarrese, as in the Catalans and the Genovese, one already notes the African; in the Gaul of central France, as well as in the Austrian, there is a suggestion of the Chinese. Clutching the Pyrenees and grafted upon the Alps, I am conscious of being an Arch-European. Formerly, when I believed that I was both humble and a wanderer, I was convinced that I was a Dionysian.
We found the town crowded with people awaiting the fair, which was to be held in a day or two. We experienced some difficulty in obtaining admission into the posada, which was chiefly occupied by Catalans from Valladolid. These people not only brought with them their merchandise but their wives and children.
In passing, they suggested to the editor of the Nuevo Mundo that he should not permit me to write again for the magazine. I wrote an article once dealing with Maceo and Cuba, whereupon a journalist from those parts jumped up and called me a fat Basque ox. The Catalans have also obliged me with some choice insults, which I have found engaging.
Honorat, from the days of the Saracen massacre to its escape from conversion into a tea-garden. The appearance of the Moslem pirates at once robbed it of its old security, and the cessation of their attacks was followed by new dangers from the Genoese and Catalans who infested the coast in the fourteenth century.
The Catalans, in the thirteenth century, engaged very extensively in the commerce of the Mediterranean, to almost every port of which they traded.
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